I am finally getting around to souping up my old 2.4 Hz macbook pro for CS4, C1pro and PT Gui. Found a bit of text I had clipped from here regarding speeding up older mac book pros using a filemate solidgo expresscard SSD with 48gb and placing the apps and temporary files on it. Sounds like a great idea bang for the buck-wise assuming you are maxed out on Ram and have a speedy hard drive. Has anyone had any additional experience with this set up?
Thanks

just wanted to let you know that i just added a 4gb ram chip to bring the total to 6gb...no problems at all....no real speed gain to speak of, i am sure it helps when several apps are open though....140$
added a 256gb ocz vertex SSD....i have a new mbp....things are flying.....not only mail, safari and such....most noticeable with aperture and to some extent with CS....processor obviously not faster but anything scratch/disk related just flies....700$

now: the drive in this mbp is limited by the 1.5gbit SATA but definitely makes use of that speed....i am planing to simply transfer this drive to a new one when the quad core mbps come out (soon?)...

looked into the 34 card drives...some issues....they get really hot, speed is not THAT great (especially compared to the vertex) and they are not THAT cheap either...also 10.6 is picky when it comes to the 34 port.....i also use a SATA card in it to speed up external things which is really worth it...almost twice fw800 speed.....
hope that helps....

Thanks, seems like going for the SSD drive is the way to go, I have the esata card and it does work great.

You can get a lot of info at http://macperformanceguide.com/

Assuming you already have a fast data drive (and you've partitioned it so the outer [fastest] portion is your scratch drive), a separate boot drive is an excellent idea. An SSD will launch applications very quickly, but I'm not sure it has any real impact on speed once you are using the apps.

i was looking into it long and hard...had the same concerns..i am not really interested in a superfast restart or just apps popping up faster....but after a week of use, you can't go back....for LR and aperture libraries it makes a HUGE difference....all these little thumbs and files and setting, HD just can't get to it fast enough...not even in raid (with the dvd drive replaced).....i don't see much improvement in cs, maybe with the scratch? plug ins definitely pop up faster....every interface is just ...there...no second of waiting, no spinning beach ball...

i bought my ssd on amazon...great return policy...check it out...you won't return it...